


The Fate of Prometheus

by blood_and_cigars



Category: Hellsing
Genre: Angst, Torture, general fucked up shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-05
Updated: 2018-06-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 10:00:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14850650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blood_and_cigars/pseuds/blood_and_cigars
Summary: Tumblr drabble; a potential look at Alucard's first few years of captivity.





	The Fate of Prometheus

Van Helsing had managed to capture Dracula, and to immobilize him in his coffin. The initial goal was to kill the vampire but preserve his body for research. This turned out to be rather difficult, seeing as the only guaranteed ways are the most destructive. A corpse was of no use once charred to a cinder, and dismemberment posed hardly a better alternative.

This is how the experiments first began:

Van Helsing tried many methods, he attempted to let the vampire bleed out, he tried to starve him, gorge him on Eucharists and holy water. None of it worked, and of course getting close enough to attempt any of these things was a trial in of itself.

The vampire could not move, he was essentially paralyzed but his powers remained intact, if dimmed. All it took was a flicker of his eyes and the nearest person would fall under his influence. The effects were different from person to person. From abject horror, to hallucinations, to acting out the vampire’s specific whims. Van Helsing believed the variation correlated to any person’s strength of will, to their character. But really it was Dracula grasping at any tactic he could think of.

They tried blindfolding him so he would not know who approached him when, but it was useless. And at that point Van Helsing couldn’t throw enough money at anyone to approach the vampire. In the beginning he’d managed to rope in numerous scientists and spiritualists alike to try their hand at Dracula. But after no more than three months, only he was mad enough to continue with the endeavor.

And that is when Van Helsing thought to gouge out Dracula’s eyes. It was said they were the source of his power. Up until then Van Helsing thought it nothing but a rumor; how happy he was to be proven wrong.

So simply the vampire’s last defence was snuffed out.

By the next morning however, they had begun to grow back. Which brought on the realization that Van Helsing didn’t need the vampire dead to conduct his research.There were endless ways to dissect and study an ever healing body. If Dracula was properly restrained, if he posed no threat, then why bother killing him at all?

***

Now Dracula, he had not spoken at all throughout this ordeal. He opted to conserve his energy. There was no use with reasoning and he’d hardly give Van Helsing the satisfaction of begging. He hadn’t made a sound.

But then his eyes were cut out. And they were cut out again. And again. Slowly, the ravaged nerves and tissue would mend until he could begin to decipher light from shadow through a murky bloody haze. But they only healed well enough for him to be able to decipher the cold glint of a blade moving towards his face and again everything would be plunged in darkness.

Then he learned to scream, to plead and beg and weep for some form of mercy. For an end to whatever this misery was.

And of course there was the rest of it, his blood was drawn, samples of flesh and sinew taken from him. There were transfusions, surgeries, amputations. They cut him open, just to poke around, to see what would happen. 

Where for awhile there had been only Van Helsing, now again there were an array of hands that wielded blades and flames and poison.

Only when it seemed his healing had begun to falter would they feed him a few drops. If somehow his body healed incorrectly (which happened increasingly often now) they cut away the ruined flesh until it grew out in a way that was satisfactory to their purposes.

Even Prometheus had not suffered such a fate.

He tried to lose sense of his body, to wait unfeeling until eventually his body would wear out, or Van Helsing would tire, or one of them would die. He told himself that he was at the mercy of nothing more than a man, not a vengeful god or a force of nature. Eventually it would end. Somehow, it must end.

And it did.

For many breaths, for countless heartbeats, for however long it took for his body to slowly learn to mend itself in the correct way, no one ventured down to his cell. All around him was silence. And he grew well enough to know hunger and discomfort, to discern more than endless searing pain. 

His joints complained of stiffness and nonexistent circulation, he was not sure were he to be released if he could even remember how to move them.

Perhaps the human had died, or run off. He might’ve even had the basement cell walled off….well that was a dreadful thought.

Dracula could only watch in outrage as a thin veil of dust fell over him. In the endless empty silence, he felt even more helpless.

His senses were limited from his imprisonment and starvation. But he strained to hear anything at all in the levels above him. If he focused long enough, he could just make out the sounds of a tree branch brushing a windowpane on the ground floor, the flitting of birds wings against a current of wind. There were no other sounds of life aside from the scurrying of some sort of rodent, and the cry of an owl.

He was very alone, and somehow, this was far worse. It felt like being buried alive, like he’d been wiped out of existence.

So trained were his senses to even the slightest sounds and smells that he knew the moment when at long last, a living human entered the grounds once again. He heard the scrape of a key, the click of a lock. He tried to catalog the footsteps—there was only the single pair of them— to try to recall who they might belong to. Whether he knew them, whether they belonged to some unwitting stranger.

He’d never bothered to listen before, he’d been so intent on his pain. He could not recognize who the steps belonged to, but they thumped down the stairwell that led to the basements and so he knew they were coming for him.

And yes, this person paused outside the cell door. Of course then he recognized the rasping breath, and the specific smell of Van Helsing’s blood.

He waited for that door to open, holding a breath he did not need. In that moment he thought of all the ways he could sweep across the cell and tear out the man’s throat. How it might possibly feel to be sated, to be rid of this endless hunger.

But then the door did open at last, and obviously, he still could not move. Van Helsing looked older, more haggard than Dracula had last seen him. But his was the first face he had seen in such a long time.

All he could feel upon looking at it was utter bliss


End file.
